This week's food adventures

First, if you have not yet seen it, I just realized Kristin Cashore wrote up a post of her tour presentation of how she wrote Bitterblue: http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/2012/12/pictures-of-book-being-made.html. A must-read, if you haven't seen her on tour--well, heck, I did see her on tour and I'm still bookmarking it to remind myself that you can struggle and struggle with a book and it might NOT be crap, in the end.

I also think this Food Timeline is awesome: http://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html (via bodlon).

I cook a lot. This week I had some good luck with various recipes.

First, I made this Peanut Butter & Greens Soup: http://vegetarian.about.com/od/soupssalads/r/peanutsoup.htm because Food Lion had bags of prewashed collards on sale for .50. They must have over-ordered for New Year's. It was really good, though I didn't have as much peanut butter as the recipe calls for. I added Huy Fong Chili Garlic sauce instead of cayenne pepper.

I also tried this Thai omelette: http://shesimmers.com/2009/05/how-to-make-thai-style-omelets.html which turned out delicious and very rich... I used only a couple tablespoons of coconut oil instead of the 3/4 cup vegetable oil. The recipe tells you not to do this, but I don't use veggie oil, and coconut oil is much too pricey to use in such quantity. It absorbed all of it, I'm not sure how much the lesser quantity of oil may have affected its ability to "flash fry". However, the end result was really good. The coconut oil is scrumptious. I ate it with Jasmine rice as suggested, hoisin sauce and more chili garlic sauce. If you need something that will hold you for a loooong time for less than a dollar, this is it.

I had gotten A Taste of Thai Spicy Thai Peanut Bake for 99 cents at Amazing Savings in Asheville in November, which I finally remembered I had and tossed on some roasted sweet potatoes. I put the peanut bake on about halfway through the roasting time, but it did burn a little. I think I could've put it on just in the last ten minutes. I really liked this, though. It's peanutty, sweet, a little spicy, and really gives roasted veggies a pop.

Thus concludes this week's food adventures.